Cakewalk
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: Mystery Science Theater 3000. This week's invention exchange involves a worryingly large dust bunny, that box of hamdingers, sugar highs, chicks, and wacky hijinks. Joel, the 'bots, and the Mads. Oneshot.


**Title: Cakewalk  
>Fandom: Mystery Science Theater 3000<br>Genre: humor/like, duh  
>Characters: Joel, Tom Servo, Crow, Gypsy, Doctor Forrester, TV's Frank<br>Rating: G  
>Summary: The invention exchange this week involves a worryingly large dust bunny, that box of hamdingers, sugar highs, chicks, and wacky hijinks.<br>Because: Joel is adorable, the bots are my BFFs, Frank's just kind of awesome, and Trace Beaulieu has the most amazing face, ever.**

* * *

><p><strong>Cakewalk<strong>

_Hi, you're lucky enough to have reached the Satellite of Love, home of Joel, Tom Servo, Crow, Gypsy, Cambot, Magic Voice, and the Worryingly Large Dust Bunny In The Corner. We're not in right now, so please leave a message after the beep and we'll really consider getting in touch with you, if we feel like it._

An off-sounding beep, followed by a robot, giggling. Then the real beep.

"Joel, I know you're there, Joel, pick up."

Dead silence. Doctor Forrester's voice turns acidic.

"Honestly, Robinson, I _know_ you're there. Need I remind you _you're marooned in space_, hmm? Screening your calls doesn't work under these circumstances. Look, your camera needs to be repaired or something, all I get is static on the screen and some distant growling noises. Get on it!"

In the distance, something that sounds frighteningly like TV's Frank making a _That's what she said! _joke. A frustrated bark from Doctor Forrester.

"Can it, Frank!"

"That's what she—"

"Check on the relay interface and put some hydro-acid on the coils. See if that helps."

"That's_ also_ what she—"

"Frank, I'm going to pull your intestines out through your ears."

"It's _uncanny_!"

"Frank, in about three seconds, you're going to be wearing leather. _Shoe_ leather. From a shoe. _My_ shoe. I'm going to kick your hiney so hard you'll be tasting toes for a month."

A dubious silence. "Well, she never said _that_."

An exasperated sigh. The phone, clattering back down on the hook.

Gypsy's pretty sure _this_ one is going in the audio scrapbook.

* * *

><p>The static clears up with a snap, pop, and a fizz. The fizzing comes from Frank, who has the misfortune to be applying the hydro-acid at the exact moment the power surges through. Doctor Forrester delivers a few hard taps on top of the interface, just for old time's sake. Technology never really gets fixed without at least some violence. Just to show it who's boss.<p>

On the interface's screen, three robots are panicking. Gypsy does so with more determination than style, racing back and forth behind the desk, shrieking. Crow's lost his eyes. Servo's nearly lost his head; it's just barely hanging on, and he wiggles back and forth in a desperate attempt to keep it from detaching completely. It isn't as though he can just snap it back in place, after all; his arms swing freely, useless but— Doctor Forrester has to admit it— pretty darn cute.

"It's Joel!" shrieks Crow, as soon as he sees the Mads staring back at him. Frank is still foaming at the mouth, but that's normal.

"_What's_ Joel?"

"Joel's Joel!"

"JOEL JOEL JOEL JOEL JOEL!" shrieks Gypsy, making another pass. "JOEL JOEL JOEL JOEL!"

"Calm down! Calm down and tell me what the booby's done now!"

"That's she what said," says Frank. Definitely slurring a little. Doctor Forrester frowns at him. It's an impressive frown, and might have done wonders for discipline around Deep 13 had it not been for the fact that Frank's brain has just been electrocuted.

"He built a suit!" yells Servo. "He built a robot space suit!"

"He's taking a space walk!"

"He wanted to get home!"

"JOEL JOEL JOEL JOEL—"

"But the AI went bad!"

"Bad, bad AI!"

Gypsy pauses, oddly enough, for breath, and there's dead silence for a moment. Into it, Tom Servo intones, "The suit ate him."

* * *

><p>On the premise that random janitor's bodies are unpleasant things to find as space jetsam, Doctor Forrester builds a Joel-catching net and instructs Frank to fire up the mini-rocket. The mini-rocket is a misnomer. It is in fact an infinitesimal rocket. The two of them squeeze tightly in together, and things are obviously going to be uncomfortable for a while.<p>

"Start 'er up, Frank."

"She whatsit said that, juniper sauce!"

"It's the easiest interface in the history of the world! One button starter. I should have built a remote, but let's let bygones be bygones, shall we? See the one marked _Start_? Easy. So easy, even an electricity-addled assistant could manage it. Push the button, Frank."

"Pigeons?" says Frank, falls forward, and pushes the button with his face.

On the ride up, Doctor Forrester mutters about the ingratitude of space cases who expect you to drop everything to go fish their carcasses out of the great vacuum in the sky, and Frank enters a coma.

* * *

><p>The docking goes smoothly, possibly because Frank is still incapacitated. Doctor Forrester picks his assistant up by the underarms and heaves him out of the mini-rocket.<p>

"Do I have to do _everything_ myself?" The answer to this is self-evident, but he answers it anyway. He likes the sound of his voice. "Yes. Yes I do. And why? Because it's impossible to find good help. I know that. But nobody ever told me it was impossible to find help that didn't spend the whole day passed out on the floor—"

He carries on grumbling to himself as he drags Frank along the polished steel floor towards the bridge of the SOL.

"Oh, little robots! Gypsy! Tom Servo! Er— other one! Where on earth are you?"

A robot's voice echoes out at him. It sounds like it's coming from the service hatch— then from the hexfield— then the entrance to the theater. Very confusing.

"Funny you should mention earth—"

"And, specifically, the phrase _why on earth_, which is singularly inappropriate for this venue. I mean, all things considered. We're _not_ on earth. At all."

"Yeah," says Crow's disembodied voice, floating up from a floor panel. "Not yet, anyway."

"Sorry about this, sirs," says Joel from somewhere unknown. "Well, not really. It's a sneaky trick, I know, but shooting me up here was a pretty sneaky trick, too, so— poetic justice?"

"Good old-fashioned justice, if you ask me."

"I can't believe they fell for it," says Gypsy, and it sounds like she's shaking her head. "What a bunch of maroons."

There's a brief burst of maniacal laughter, but then the door slams shut on Crow.

* * *

><p>"This rocket," says Tom Servo, "is infinitesimal."<p>

"Look, we get along alright," says Crow, mildly, then snaps, "but that doesn't mean I want your hand _there_."

"Like I've got any control over my hand!" Servo growls back.

"Guys, guys," says Joel. "Take a chill pill. This rocket's too small for fighting."

"Isn't this exciting?" burbles Gypsy. "I always wanted to know what life was like outside of the Satellite of Love! Now I'll find out! Firsthand! Well! First-coil!"

"That's right, Gypsy." Joel pets her, distractedly, staring at the instrument panel, which seems to be strangely lacking in instruments. "Where's the— oh." He hits the _Start_ button, half-grinning to himself. "Well, that's so simple even a child could do it."

"Ever fly one of these before?" Servo asks, off-handedly, only to receive a bark of anger from Crow, and Joel has to lean back between the two of them to prevent serious damage.

"Come _on_, guys!"

"Boys!" screeches Gypsy. "Can't you see Joel's trying to fly us to Earth? JUST CALM DOWN!"

"I told you never to make that joke again!"

"It's a classic!"

"I'm gonna turn your hoverskirt into a vacuum tube, that's what I'm gonna do, and then I'm gonna _mop the floor with you_!"

"That doesn't make any _sense!_ You're clearly foggy on basic cleaning procedures, which wouldn't shock anyone who got a whiff of you—"

"_Guys_!" says Joel, once more, figuring out how to steer— more or less.

Both the bots say, as one, "But _Joel_, he—"

"_Don't make me pull this rocket over_."

He will, too. If absolutely forced. Space-spankings, he discovered years ago, are surprisingly effective punishments. It's probably the inclusion of the word "space" that does it.

* * *

><p>Frank wakes up— slowly— to find Doctor Forrester arranging him in a highly uncomfortable chair.<p>

"Doctor F?"

"Ah, awake, are we, Sleeping Ugly? Good. Shut up, Frank."

"Uh—" says Frank, frowning thoughtfully. "I didn't really say anything, Doctor F."

"I know, Frank, it's just, you've been passed out for the better part of two hours, and I missed saying it. Shut up, Frank. Shut up, Frank. There, that's better."

"Uh," says Frank, again, as their entire environment starts shifting and lurching. "Doctor Forrester, why are you sitting in my lap?"

"It's a one man escape pod, Frank. I'm the man. I guess that makes you the pod, hmm? Shut up." Doctor Forrester sighs happily.

"Escape pod?"

"Oh, yes. I had one smuggled into the Satellite of Love while Joel was asleep, months back, in case of just such an emergency. Hidden in the supply closet, cleverly disguised as a box of hamdingers."

"A box of hamdingers?" Frank starts to laugh, then aborts it when his head throbs. Clutching at the linoleum curl in his hair, he says, "Didn't he ever think to look in there?"

"Of course not. Nobody likes hamdingers."

This is true.

"So what's the plan, Clay?"

"Well, Frank, the mini-rocket is programmed to return to the Institute. They should be crash-landing there in—" He checks his watch. "Oh, about twenty, twenty-five minutes."

"Crash-landing?"

"It's _Joel_."

"Oh. Right."

"Anyway, I say, give them about ten minutes to extricate themselves, five to take part inventory, another ten to find the missing parts, and then Joel will be headed for the exit as fast as he can hobble, arms full of partially-rendered bots. Twenty minutes to find a taxi, two minutes to realize he doesn't have any cash, and then he'll start to walk. Thirty seconds to the end of the street. By the time he gets there, we'll be waiting for him." Doctor Forrester hoists his special Joel-catching net. "I guess this'll come in handy after all."

"You really think he'll run?"

"I know it."

"But— he thinks we're still stuck up here. Doesn't he want to experiment on _us_? As, like— revenge?"

"Oh, I'm sure he would if he thought about it," says Doctor Forrester, cheerfully. "But you fail to take into account why I chose Joel for the experiment in the first place. He's kind-hearted. In the event that he escaped, I knew he'd never try to make _me_ suffer for all the times I made _him_ suffer. Reciprocal cruelty just isn't in him. Reciprocal idiocy, yes, but I'll let you worry about that. He's just too nice. A sort of failsafe, you see."

"Kind-hearted," says Frank, thoughtfully.

"Yeah."

"Huh."

Doctor Forrester steers for home.

"Funny," says Frank, "and all this time I thought it was just 'cause you didn't like him."

"Ah," says Doctor Forrester. "Well. That too."

* * *

><p><em>My invention exchange this week is the cakewalk. It's for when your shoes crave sugar, too.<em> _And the best thing about it is, it's just so easy!_

"Sidewalks!" says Gypsy.

"Fresh air!" says Crow.

"Chicks!" says Tom Servo.

"Get _back_ here, Tom," says Joel.

He can't be angry. He is literally incapable of being angry. There _are_ sidewalks, and there _is_ fresh air, and there are— oh gosh— there _are_ chicks, even. Mostly, there is Earth. There is Earth, and the poetry of it, and the present of it, wrapped up and delivered to him. He doesn't even feel bad about stranding Doctor Forrester and TV's Frank up there on the SOL. Much. His feet are solid on the pavement, and that car almost hit him— but it didn't! Wasn't that nice?— and he's breathing air that hasn't been recycled a bajillion times—

"Joel, can we go to Disneyland?"

"Is there a Museum of Richard Baseheart?"

Servo's reading signs. "Ho-Ho's Hamburgers?" he says, chuckles darkly, shakes his head. "Jeez, what, was it named by clowns?"

"Now, just— hold your horses, guys. Calm down." _Calm down, Joel! Breathe!_ "Plenty of time for everything."

He's convincing himself. He's convincing himself, and his heart is singing. _Home, I'm home. Plenty of time for everything, for everything._

_The cakewalk. For when things are just a little too easy. Best thing about it is the sugar high. Whaddya think, sirs?_

Up ahead, there in the distance, is the end of the street.


End file.
